Earlier in the year I was given a pair of tree ferns, refugees from a rather overgrown garden and ungrateful as it sounds, not really what I wanted in my garden. This was the cue for a minor flurry of changes in the planting adjacent to my small terrace. I popped them in at either end of the paving and connected them with a modest lavender hedge undersown with night scented stock. I cut the dead fronds off and watered well. Since then I can sincerely say that they have given me pleasure every day whether just blowing in the breeze, pushing out new fronds or just dripping with rain drops. The most curious thing is that the rough trunks, they are just over a metre tall, are a home to a further collection of refugees from the old garden. There is a vigorous old fashioned rose with runners and a pink flowers, aquilegia seedlings golden feverfew, violets and young bronze fennel plants., they seem to be doing no harm and so there they stay. On top of this I planted a clematis at the base of each, a green/white macropetala on one and a mystery small flowered yellow tangutica on the other and boy!, don't they look good. I dare say I shall have to look after and protect them should we get any cold weather this winter, which does not seem very likely and then they will not look so good unless of course I make up some hazel wigwams and stuff  them with straw....watch this space.

I think I can safely say that September has been as good an example of an Indian Summer as one could wish for, it has been joy to garden every day and my only gripe is that I have been irrigating wilting trees and shrubs planted in the spring every week and I have had enough, I long for them to be able to fend for themselves, they need not expect me to give them a drop next year, it's 'backs to the wall' chaps and good luck.

I have been given a new garden to plan and tend around a restored barn and dovecote, which will be used during the shooting season as the lunch stop. It is very beautiful and I have planned simple set-edged borders at the base of the walls, sweeping lawns all round the building and a mixed hedge of beech and yew on the boundary. Because the building will be used mainly during the shooting season (winter), I am trying to locate shrubs and stuff, which will look especially good at that time. I don't want it to be too predictable and boring so winter jasmine and Viburnum 'Dawn' will, alas not get a look in.. The builders were going to fill my borders with the usual red, raw, stony subsoil they call topsoil but I beat them to it and found a local supplier of gorgeous soil mixed with sterilised chicken waste and had twenty tonnes delivered before anyone could say no. I shall not attempt to plant until the builders have left the site, they like nothing better than to trample on
newly planted borders and lift my plants willy-nilly to fiddle underground with things that should have been fiddled with weeks before. Roll on October and I can begin.

All the dry weather last month made Daisy my jack russell very dusty. I gave up bathing her in the end, within half a day she was grey again. Birds thrive on dust baths and so I thought she could do the same. We both enjoy this time of year, lovely relaxing days, mooching about, tidying here and there, admiring my handiwork and making plans for the winter. Nothing stands still round here.